If you have ever heard anyone say "redshirt," "beam me up," "exterminate," or "bigger on the inside," chances are you were talking to a fan of Star Trek or Doctor Who. As two of the longest-running and arguably the most popular science fiction television series of all time, these shows may, at first glance, seem very much alike. However, despite their superficial similarities, a closer look at both Doctor Who and Star Trek reveals many differences between each show's premise, setting, and protagonist.
The first difference, and possibly the most ambiguous, is the premise. While both shows involve stories of outer-space adventures, Star Trek is mostly limited to exploration of unknown planets and venturing "where no man has gone before" (the…show more content… Star Trek is primarily set within the U.S.S. Enterprise, a giant starship, but occasionally features extraterrestrial landscapes when the characters venture outside to investigate a new planet. Doctor Who is also often set inside its own ship, a time-travelling vehicle called the "Tardis" (a name given by the show's protagonist as an acronym for "time and relative dimensions in space"), or on distant planets, but that is where the similarity ends. Star Trek's Enterprise is a white ship comprised of a broad saucer-shaped section, where most of the defense weapons are held, and a back section containing the ship's two powerful antimatter-powered warp engines, which are capable of propelling the entire ship at a velocity greater than the speed of light. Doctor Who, on the other hand, features the Tardis, a time machine which is immeasurably large on the inside but appears on the outside as a blue 1960's police phone booth due to a malfunctioning "chameleon circuit" (designed to blend the ship into its surroundings). Rather than traveling through space with warp engines, the Tardis simply dematerializes and reappears in whatever time and place the operator chooses. An additional difference worth noting is that Star Trek's Enterprise crew almost never visits Earth, while a majority of Doctor Who episodes do take place on Earth, usually in modern